At ease, soldiers. The Pirate Bay is back in the Google search index. I understand this was eating at your very soul for some time now. → Read More
The Pirate Bay just can’t catch a break these days. I won’t bore you with the past, but today’s juicy gossip is: Google has removed The Pirate Bay from its search index because of a DMCA complaint! → Read More
Lost in all the Apple hoopla yesterday: the company that wanted to buy The Pirate Bay was just thrown off the Swedish stock exchange. Still think the deal is going down? → Read More
Social this, social that. Looks like everything is being socialized these days—but not the American health care system, zing!—so it only makes sense for someone to try to socialize BitTorrent. It doesn’t hurt when that “someone” is the people behind IsoHunt, who just launched Hexagon.cc, a message board/social network hybrid built around sharing content. → Read More
It’s not even a story any more that Apple loves to reject Apps from the App Store. Today’s entry in the Big Book of App Rejections is µMonitor, an App that monitors µTorrent that you have running on your PC. Apple rejected it because “this category of applications is often used for the purpose of infringing third party rights.” → Read More
It’s not even a story any more that Apple loves to reject Apps from the App Store. Today’s entry in the Big Book of App Rejections is µMonitor, an App that monitors µTorrent that you have running on your PC. Apple rejected it because “his category of applications is often used for the purpose of infringing third party rights.” → Read More
Years from now, when the history of BitTorrent-related Internet piracy is written, there will have to be at least one chapter devoted to The Pirate Bay. It showed up just as the likes of Suprnova and LokiTorrent were being shut down, and quickly became the go-to place for, shall we say, the less savvy BitTorrent user. It also became a symbol of the copyright reform movement, though the site’s cavalier attitude toward any sort of authority ultimately led to its undoing. (The whole “we’re untouchable!” gimmick the site had played up was, we can now say, ill advised.) → Read More
Oh, God. Well, it looks like Global Gaming Foundation X, the company that wanted to buy The Pirate Bay, has approved the acquisition. All the financing is in place (the deal will be financed by GGF itself, which means that nobody else wanted anything to do with the deal), and GGF is ready to roll, officially. Total price: 60 million Swedish kroner, or about $8.3 million. In the immortal words of Greg “Opie” Hughes, “Good luck, bro.” → Read More
Scratch one Web site off that “alternative to The Pirate Bay” list. Mininova has been ordered by a Dutch court to remove all links to copyrighted items from its servers, or face fines to the tune of €5 million. You get the feeling that the era of BitTorrent as we know it is about to end, don’t you? → Read More
You need only one word to describe The Pirate Bay. It comes from the Ancient Greek, is six letters long, and entered the English language in 1884, some 120 years before the Web site’s founding. When The Pirate Bay starts to compare its struggles to those of Western Europe during World War II—you know, the struggle against Nazi Germany—only one word is needed. That word is hubris, and if it were possible to die from hubris, The Pirate Bay would have already expired. Hopefully there’s no such thing as copyright in Heaven (or Hell). → Read More
You know how on the Internet, after something particularly stupid happens, someone says, “I lol’d”? Well, I lol’d after reading the following two sentences: “There is uncertainty surrounding the purchase of file-sharing website The Pirate Bay (TPB) by Swedish-based Global Gaming Factory (GGF). Trading in GGF shares has been suspended and there are reports that the firm’s chairman—Magnus Bergman—has resigned.” → Read More
This goes to show you just how quickly someone will replace The Pirate Bay if it ever goes “legit.” As you’re probably aware, someone downloaded every single torrent fie hosted on TPB’s servers; that torrent file was the uploaded back to TPB, where it’s now being seeded from hundreds of sources. What’s new is that someone took that copy of TPB and uploaded it to another Web site, creating, in essence, a copy of TPB. → Read More
You might like to know that The Pirate Bay has been ordered to shut down in the Netherlands. That is, courts there would like to prevent people from inside the land of orange from accessing the site. Of course, The Pirate Bay, when they found out* about the case, denied all wrongdoing. → Read More
Not for nothing, but it looks like the sale of The Pirate Bay may well be in jeopardy. You’ll recall that the site announced last month that it had found a buyer in Global Gaming Factory. The deal was predicated on the ability of GGF to come up with nearly $7 million, which now doesn’t look all that certain. → Read More
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Is the company that announced plans last month to buy The Pirate Bay now getting cold feet? A lawyer representing Global Gaming Factory X said in a Dutch court today that GGF would only buy The Pirate Bay if it could turn it into a “legitimate business.” And while we’re at it, I’d like to announce that I plan on purchasing the New York Knicks, but only if I can turn it into a winning baseball team. → Read More
One of the abilities of smartphones I’ve always coveted is the ability to peek in at your torrents and see how they’re doing. Is that movie finished? Is anyone downloading that pack of videos I put up? These are questions that demand answers while you’re waiting in line at the coffee shop three minutes from your house. Well, Android has a promising young app called Transdroid (not to be confused with a voice-modulating app of the same name) that lets you check up on your precious torrents from a distance. It’ll work with Transmission, µTorrent, plain BitTorrent or Deluge, as long as you have a version that supports a web UI. Go look for it in the preferences, I’ll wait. → Read More
You wouldn’t want to be isoHunt founder Gary Fung these days. He’s currently facing an MPAA lawsuit that could well result in fines in the millions of dollars. (TorrentSpy was ordered to cough up $100 million last year.) And even if Mr. Fung doesn’t have that kind of money, and he doesn’t, the MPAA is prepared to pursue any judgment “for the rest of his life.” The MPAA sounds like it means business. → Read More
Jealous of the likes of CNET and Scobilizer getting to play with Microsoft Office 2010? Well don’t be! You, too, can edit spreadsheets and send e-mail if you’re willing to fire up your newsreader or BitTorrent client. → Read More
At $90, Brite-View’s CinemaCube appears to be a viable BitTorrent downloader for the home theater, but my first few minutes with it were an exercise in futility. Testing the other features of the CinemaCube seems pointless if I can’t get the BitTorrent client to work, IMO. That’s not to say I didn’t get it to work, but it shouldn’t be as difficult as it is. Consider this a rant, but I’ll do my best to keep a level head about it. Once I’ve worked all the kinks out I’ll have a full review, but until then…you get the point. → Read More
This isn’t exactly shocking news, but here we go: The WWDC 2009 build of Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6) has been leaked onto the Internet. I would imagine Apple doesn’t want you, Average Guy, to download it, but don’t expect me to try and stop you. → Read More
